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This war has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli Wars. Whatever future peace in the Middle East looks like it cannot contain the Hamas terrorist group. Hamas is an internationally acknowledged terror group whose constitution requires the annihilation of Israel. Since coming to power in Gaza, they have used their …

When Aristotle repeated the wisdom of the Delphic Oracle of ‘Know Thyself’ he was preceded and followed by a long line of poets, philosophers and other idlers. The phrase spans all languages, all religions. It is one of those quick and helpful philosophical gems which, like the ‘Cogitans’ of Descartes – …

There was a time when the HG Wells story ‘War of the Worlds’, made into a horrific musical score by Jeff Wayne, was pure fantasy. A time when ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ was an album by Pink Floyd and stand-up comedians, like Norm McDonald, could make jokes about …

A change of seasons brings a change of perspective. With St Martin appearing on a white horse to signal the first snows in central and eastern Europe, with the mid- terms behind us and the cost to the west growing like a US budget deficit, the talk has turned to …

So, in the red corner we have Nicola Sturgeon the “real” feminist and in the blue Corner J.K. Rowling the defender of human rights against destroyer Sturgeon. The winner requires two falls, a submission or a knockout. The issue that is bothering everybody ought to be so boring and dull …

In previous generations people like me wrote in obscurity. We wrote letters to friends and colleagues that were afterwards destroyed. We might have written pamphlets or contributed to small circulation political magazines. If we were very fortunate indeed, we might have been asked to write a column in a newspaper …

Despite Russia’s reverses in recent weeks in its invasion of Ukraine, China has doubled-down in its diplomatic support for Putin. We can be grateful this has yet to materialise into the People’s Liberation Army mustering in Donbas, but it now seems only a matter of time before the world will …

Alas poor Liz. There were all sorts of reasons for the financial crisis in 2008, but Labour rightly got the blame. It got the blame even though Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling performed creditably and even though the crisis was a worldwide phenomenon. The public didn’t follow or indeed understand …

Three years after his defeat to Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership election, Jeremy Hunt has finally become Prime Minister – or at least, he is now running the country. Liz Truss’ credibility has been so violently shredded that she no longer holds authority within her own government. Sacking …

Since 2016 the SNP has consistently hoped that Brexit would make it easier for Sturgeon to argue for Scottish independence. Scottish opinion was in favour of remaining in the EU, so disappointed Remainers would support the SNP’s argument that the only way to have EU membership would be to leave …

With the bridge over the Kerch Straight having just been blown up and Russia threatening “judgement day”, it is hard to believe that the SNP is still considering an unofficial independence referendum in a little more than a year. I know let’s abolish the British Armed Forces and leave its …

Our politics is in crisis and has been for some time. From last year’s Partygate to Truss and Kwarteng’s mini-budget calamity just last month, the nation’s woes seem to stem from a democratic deficit at the heart of the United Kingdom’s electoral system. The crisis began with the 2016 Brexit …

When the French Revolution abolished the ‘Estates General’, and appeared to usher in the Enlightenment virtues of egalitarianism, the accepted liberal historical view was that the age of absolutist and clerical elites had been confined to the dustbin of history. Whilst the absolutism of the past was replaced by varieties …

Being a Conservative voter involves one disappointment after another. We vote for free markets, small state, lower public spending, lower taxes and always end up with the opposite. David Cameron’s major achievement was granting the SNP an independence referendum which led to Scottish nationalism moving from a minority pursuit that …

Russia claims to have annexed four oblasts Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson of Ukraine after holding referendums despite Ukraine not giving it permission to do so. Naturally neither Ukraine nor anyone else in the West has recognised this annexation, but it is nevertheless significant. Russia can now say as with …

The consensus amongst liberals in the 1990s and, arguably, since Adam Smith, was a belief in the ‘de-territorialisation’ of the world. This was the belief that globalisation was a force for good, an economic version of Christendom, that the invisible hand of the market would produce benefits on a global …

Liz Truss is attempting to rescue both Britain and the Conservative Party by a supply side revolution involving massive tax cuts. Suddenly after years of Tory centrism and wet mush we have got Friedman and Hayek back as the philosophy behind Kwasi Kwarteng’s thinking. It is not so much quasi-Conservatism …

There are approximately 4.6 million adults in Scotland. Of these around 1.9 million or 41% pay no income tax. 48% of us pay between 19 and 21%. While 9.9% pay 41% and 1% pay 46%. Around 60% of revenue raised in Scotland comes from that top 10%. But this means …

The reason it is so boring trying to have any sort of debate with Scottish nationalists, is that after a while you realise that they are repeating what they have read on a sort of crib sheet. Eventually any discussion either ends with swearing and insults or exactly the same …

Everybody including me got everything wrong about the war in Ukraine. The Germans and the French thought it wasn’t going to happen right up until the moment that it did. The British and the Americans thought that the Ukrainians would be defeated within a week or so. The fear was …